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Weave a Better Web: 3 Ways to Bolster Your Healthcare Consumerism Strategy

The Employee Benefits Research Institute finds just 45% of workers are satisfied with the care they received. For employers investing in the cost of patient care, that’s a smudge on the significant benefit you offer to employees and their families.

In this busy time of health plan program design, you are undoubtedly working to weave a more supportive web for employees and family members. Have you considered these patient-centered strategies?

  1. Use patient engagement data. Claims data trends, like shifts away from the ER to urgent care clinics, give plan sponsors important markers of how well patients are incorporating the habits of health care consumerism. But they are lagging indicators, demonstrating how educational and plan design is faring. Consider a leading measure, a benchmark of your population’s consumerism skills, to focus your strategy efforts.
  2. Strengthen patient engagement skills. Curate patient-educational resources for employees and their family members and promote them on multiple benefits communication channels—benefits website, mobile app, onsite wellness centers—so patients can prepare better and more efficiently for doctor appointments. If you’re just getting started, how about this surgerychecklist used across the globe and recently validated? The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offers patient decision aids. Consumer Reports has a robust, clinician-reviewed library of tip sheets for patients.
  3. Support better self-care. Research suggests exercise is “an astonishing panacea” to many things that ail us as well as amechanism for making us resilient in the face of normal ups and downs. Use the levers of your wellness program to support employees achieve their best health to help stave off stress and illness.

What is on the docket for your team this year? How will you help all your workers better engage with their health care team when they need it? I’d be delighted to talk about your approach with you.

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